Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Joule's Orgy

Do we have to be complaining all the time about today? Why do we always long for the “good old days”. What good was that? No air conditioning, no vaccines, no soap, no chance to solve a dispute without a sword and no roaring spacecraft taking off from the surface of the earth. I see better times coming forward. I see the world without nations. If you really want to be nostalgic about something thirty years from now, make the most of the amount of energy we have today.

I was driving today from Tallahassee, Florida, to New Orleans, Louisiana, where I’m writing this. When the night is falling, it’s impressive to see the contrast between the scary loneliness of the trees at the side of the road and the vivid ambition of ten consecutive illuminated banners. How many hours of work are in all those miles and miles of pavement, perfectly demarcated and maintained in the middle of nowhere? Outside my car, an unbearable and humid heat. Inside, cold air, drums in the bass, Joan Jett in the speakers, stats from a shine blue control panel and the soft swing of hydraulic compensation.

This energy feast; this absolute orgy of Joules, is marking a peak, not for its growth but for its acceleration. Never again we will be able to burn this amount of fossil fuel in private affairs, let alone putting a plane on the air for leisure.

We are living a time that our descendants will see with stupefaction. The last hundred years have been subsidized by the Mesozoic era. This source is so rich that make us live with more comforts than a medieval king, even with the inefficiency of machines, the big chunk taken by corporations and the taxes kept by bureaucratic governments.

I have been passing small towns that certainly will disappear at the end of this energy dream. It won’t be dramatic or apocalyptic as preached by panic worshipers; it will be slow and sad, just as the body decays from youth to older age.